


#3 my way or the highway

by TemporaryDysphoria



Series: TD's Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: Lupin III
Genre: Mention of Off-Screen Character Death, Training to Exhaustion, Violence and Blood, Whumptober 2020, forced to their knees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26850613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TemporaryDysphoria/pseuds/TemporaryDysphoria
Summary: His knuckles sting. The skin had been ripped off of them from the fistfight. He’d aimed for the man’s face and copped a fistful of gravel instead.Too slow.Prompt Fill for Day 3 of Whumptober.Prompt was: Forced to their knees.
Series: TD's Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947205
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	#3 my way or the highway

Goemon aches all over. Time is a concept he no longer considers important. The only thing that matters is getting out. 

He hasn’t stopped running since they made it to the safe house. He stayed long enough to see Lupin drop Fujiko onto the sofa with a wince. Long enough to see Jigen stomp past with a first aid kit, and then he was gone. 

_ He must improve.  _

_ He needs to improve.  _

_ He was not disciplined enough and his partners were hurt. _

He shouldn’t have come back to start with. He wasn’t ready. 

His knuckles sting. The skin had been ripped off of them from the fistfight. He’d aimed for the man’s face and copped a fistful of gravel instead.

_ Too slow. _

The night air is cold against his skin, sliding it’s way through the bullet holes in his kimono. They hadn’t hit him, he moved too fluidly for that, but mere cloth was not so lucky. It’s going to be colder still when he reaches the waterfall, a welcome discomfort to remind him of his shortcomings.

* * *

The water crashes down around him, thunderous, consuming. He can still hear Fujiko screaming. Even with his eyes squeezed shut he can’t wash the image from his mind. The bullet misses her by an inch, and she was looking right at him. 

Staring with wide eyes as the tip of the knife became visible through the front of her shirt. It brought ruddy crimson in its wake, blossoming out through the fabric like a flower, opening its petals to the sun. 

Goemon separated the man's arm from his shoulder - watched as he looked on in shock while the limb hit the ground. Then he took the other one, and his head for good measure. 

_ An exact revenge, but ultimately a useless one.  _

Like the waterfall, following the unending call of gravity, everything went downhill from there. 

Lupin took a bullet to the shoulder as he tried to reach Fujiko, and a kick to the back of the knee slowed him up. A man with a knife got too close to Jigen. He left a long red line down his cheek; and left the side of his suit jacket split neatly from his heart down. Only the kevlar underneath saved him. The man dropped to the ground, his jaw shattered from the butt of the magnum, deadly even when empty. 

They made a pitiful image as they struggled to get to the car. Fujiko slung over Jigen’s shoulder, claret running freely, staining the light blue of his dress shirt. They dodged the bullets that Goemon didn’t stop, and Lupin shot back with unerring accuracy for his bad side. 

The car starts on the second go, and then there’s silence. 

A reprieve too brief, and ultimately meaningless, because the consequences of Goemon’s previous inadequacies are still visible. Fujiko is still bleeding, Lupin is still limping, and Jigen is still grimacing as he slams the Fiat into third gear and presses the gas to the floor.

* * *

They ask him to come back a few days later but he can’t. 

_ ‘It has to be this. _ ’ He says. It has to be this way. There’s too much to fix, internal and external and it can’t be done when Fujiko’s recovery is still hanging in the balance, taunting him like a dark cloud threatening to wreak havoc on everything in its wake. 

So Goemon trains. 

He runs until his legs and lungs burn, until his knees quiver from the overuse. He climbs until his hands are calloused and bloody, and then climbs some more, leaving the evidence of his dedication behind him. 

It might have been days, it might have been weeks, it might have been years. Goemon hasn’t kept count. All he knows is he won’t return until he is certain he can protect them once more - if they even let him return. 

He dimly recognises that he should be eating more, but he hasn’t got enough daylight to train his form, to meditate, to perform his physical training  _ and _ eat food. He eats the bare minimum to fuel his training, and the growling of his stomach becomes something of a sombre self-flagellation. A reminder that he needs to do  _ more _ . 

He wakes during the night, shivering. At first only once, then it becomes twice, then it’s three or four times per night,  _ every night _ . How many nights? Too many to count. He hasn’t heard from the others in what feels like months.

* * *

He’s returning from the woods when he spies the Fiat. His hands are dirty and bloody from his climb, and he’s had to take in his hakama the previous week because it was getting too big. The vehicle makes his heart stutter. It’s not unusual for one or all of the others to seek him out but they normally contact him first. 

_ Something is wrong. _

A lanky figure is leaning against the bonnet. The suit jacket is in pristine condition now, and there’s no blood to be seen on the blue dress shirt. There’s a familiar cigarette drooping from the man's lips, and a pale white scar runs down his cheek, disappearing into a scruffy beard. 

Jigen lifts the brim of his hat as Goemon walks closer. His eyes are searching, appraising, heavy. He scans the samurai’s body, and Goemon can feel the weight of the gaze as it runs over him. He is suddenly embarrassingly aware of what he looks like - of what the time in isolation has done to him. 

“Jigen,” he bows his head in respectful greeting, his vocal chords tearing themselves with the new use. 

“Mmm.” 

The gunman has never really been one for articulating his thoughts well. He’s still searching for something in the samurai. Goemon is acutely aware of the blood running between his fingers, of scraped nails, and bruised knees. 

Jigen sighs, and it’s a full body movement. His eyes look up to the sky. Anyone else would say he’s praying, but Goemon knows better. The gunman answers to no god. 

“She didn’t make it.”

Goemon’s brain short circuits. His knees no longer shake, but they buckle underneath him and it takes less than a second for Jigen to be at his side.  __

The grass is smooth and green under his knees; such a contrast to the flat black of Jigen’s trousers, to the dark blue of his own hakama. He presses flat hands against the tiny leaves. The earth drinks in his sacrifice, and he wishes he had more to give. 

“M’Sorry.” Jigen says, but it sounds distant, like he’s talking through cotton wool on the far side of a room. 

Goemon is sorry too. 

So,  _ so,  _ sorry.


End file.
